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Woman Regrets Being Stay-at-Home Mom

byJudy DuttonJun 21, 2013

It’s a tough call: Once a
woman has kids, should she stay home with them or return to work? Well, according
to one Wall Street trader who quit her job 20 years ago to become a SAHM
(stay-at-home mom), she’d made a big mistake.

“At no point did I calculate the
lifetime impact of diminished earnings and prospects,” Lisa Endlich Heffernan
wrote in her column for the Huffington
Post. “One day I was working on the trading floor of a London bank
and the next, I was on the floor of my children's playroom. Not once did I
think, at age 33, of what the job market would look like for me a few years
down the road.”

Heffernan’s post was shared
over a thousand times on Facebook and received hundreds of comments. For
instance: “I think that
there are MANY women who feel the same way.... whether they say it publically
is another story!” says another SAHM. “I have a college education and NEVER
used it.” Or another: “I fear that whatever decision we make when it comes to
raising our children will be fraught with a mixture of regret, confusion,
what-ifs and a case of grass-is-always-greener. I truly wish life was so simple
that we were granted the guarantee of feeling at peace with our decisions and
sacrifices.”

Heffernan did stay at work after having her first two
kids, describing the situation as “helplessly out of control.” Once she became
pregnant with a third, she decided to throw in the towel.

In retrospect, Heffernan
says she should have worked part-time, and urges other women to do the same. “Keep a pilot light
under your professional life,” she said.